Nonprofit has little money but plenty of volunteers and ‘big hearts’
Courtesy of Kentucky Lantern
CENTRAL CITY—As Gwen Clements walks through the building where her fledgling nonprofit is making its home, she sees the work that’s still ahead.
The corroded electrical wiring inside the small building along Everly Brothers Boulevard needs to be replaced. Ceiling panels are drooping. Signs among the racks of clothes and toiletries still point to where customers could once shop for pumps and filters at the former pool supply store.
“A little disheartened,” said Clements when asked by a first-time visitor how she was feeling about the place on a recent November afternoon. “But we’ll get there.”
She also says they’ve come a long way.
The Lantern reported earlier this year about Clements’ efforts in Muhlenberg County in the series “No Kentucky Home.” Clements started a Facebook group in 2024 that helped bring together people seeking to provide money, food, shelter and other support for their neighbors experiencing homelessness. That loose coalition has now become the Breakthrough Base of Muhlenberg County, a nonprofit formed in May. Clements serves as its vice president.
The goal: Create a resource hub where people experiencing homelessness can get a hot meal, a shower, do some laundry and get help with paperwork to get an I.D. card. There’s no shower installed yet, nor a kitchen space — but they have a building. Clements previously said she was inspired by another nonprofit in Somerset that’s become a shelter and hub for homeless people.
She said the official nonprofit, which is leasing the building in Central City, has gotten more support from the community than when it was an unofficial group organizing through Facebook. She felt, in the past, local homeless people were met with apathy, or at times disregard, from local officials. The work of the nonprofit has “been welcomed.”
“Everybody says this is such a needed program, that what we’re doing is such a needed thing in Muhlenberg County,” Clements said. “That feels good. Because two years ago, a year ago — I didn’t feel that way.”
Local people experiencing homelessness who were at the building on this recent November day say the nonprofit is providing resources that haven’t been available in their western Kentucky county, along with a community space where they can exist without apprehension.
‘A place to just be’
The nonprofit has volunteers, clothing, food and appliances—but it still likely needs thousands of dollars for renovations. That’s why Breakthrough Base was raffling off an expensive hunting bow, offering donated chili from the nearby Wendy’s and giving away winter clothes on a November weekend to try to meet the gap. The 501(c)(3) nonprofit has also been gathering donations through online accounts with PayPal, Venmo and Cash App on their Facebook page.
Mary Luenebrink, 44, sat in a chair near tables of winter clothing, having walked over from the tent where she had been sleeping. She mentioned how it’s hard to stay clean or “go to the bathroom” when living outside.
“Being able to come up here, it helps. It keeps you out of your head,” Luenebrink said, mentioning she had been seeing a therapist from the Pennyroyal Center inside the building. “They got big hearts to do something like this, to get it off the ground.”
The building, with its blemishes, is also becoming a community space for local homeless people.
Cyndi Aday, the nonprofit’s food director, said that on some mornings volunteers have pulled up and found people sitting outside “just waiting for us to open.” Sometimes it’s raining with no place to go outside of their tents, she said, so they come to the storefront.
“They just hang out,” Aday said. “It gives them a place to just be.”
Even though the hours of operation are limited to a few in the middle of the day, Aday said she tries to stay longer to talk with the people they’re helping. It helps build relationships, she said, and it gives them something to do.
Some of those in need of shelter pitch in to help with tasks around the building, said Clements. “They feel productive, and they feel like they’re doing something that matters.”
The community space—and the outreach from it—also give the new nonprofit the opportunity to connect with more people in the homeless community, including those who are ashamed to show up at the building but instead contact Clements personally.
“They’re afraid to reach out. They’re afraid to be judged. I tell them, ‘There’s no judgment with us,’” Clements said. “That’s the hidden homelessness.”
The work before winter
In the back of the building is a cavernous garage that was once filled with pool liners and other supplies and is now an empty concrete floor. What Clements imagines it could be: a “white flag” or overnight warming shelter for when temperatures are dangerously cold and people need to move inside to stay safe.
The wooden roof has water damage that needs repair, Clements said, along with a space needing insulation. Clements isn’t entirely confident they can get the space ready for the upcoming winter.
The converted storefront is next door to the Central Inn, a motel where Clements and others have rented rooms—with crowdfunded money raised through her Facebook group—for people experiencing homelessness during cold weather.
“I just didn’t want to do another winter of motel rooms, and it’s already looking like that’s where we’re at,” Clements said.
She’s not sure if her community, the place where she grew up, would support a more comprehensive emergency shelter that would operate year-round as some are operating in other parts of the state. Clements also feels that much of her community’s challenge with rural homelessness would be alleviated by building and repairing more affordable housing in Muhlenberg County.
Kentucky’s housing shortage
Kentucky is grappling with a significant housing shortage in both urban and rural communities; the gap of more than 200,000 housing units is expected to grow if no action is taken. A national research firm had estimated Muhlenberg County, with a little over 30,000 people, had a housing gap of 952 units in 2024. State lawmakers have been looking at ways to build more housing through easing regulations and providing tax breaks for housing developers.
“We need permanent housing solutions, and we need a better crisis response system across the board,” said Adrienne Bush, executive director of the advocacy group Homeless and Housing Coalition of Kentucky. She praised efforts to prevent people from dying during extreme weather as well as a year-round approach of connecting people to housing.
The number of people experiencing homelessness across the state has also grown. The annual nationwide survey tracked a more than 10% increase in people experiencing homelessness in Kentucky from January 2024 to January 2025. The steepest increase was outside Lexington and Louisville. Volunteers and agency outreach workers counted 5,789 individuals who lacked “a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence,” the federal definition of homeless used for the survey.
The survey counted eight people experiencing homelessness in Muhlenberg County in January 2025. Clements, who helped with the count, believes that number is higher. Her nonprofit plans to start keeping detailed demographic records of each person they help to better exemplify the local need when asking for grant funding.
She said it’s that need for funding that is holding the nonprofit back. But that hasn’t stopped them.
“As far as helping people, we are helping them. We are helping them every day. We have a lot of contacts every day with different people, and sometimes they just need some information” about helpful agencies, Clements said.
Clements feels a responsibility to see the efforts of the nonprofit through, feeling more responsibility now that a part of the loose coalition helping others has moved into the storefront. She also worries about the precedent that could be set.
“We have got to succeed. We can’t fail,” Clements said. “If we fail, there’ll never be anything else to come about to help the people in Muhlenberg County, the unfortunate people.”
Kentucky Lantern is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
